| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: deeply-set window, which threw the shadows of everything back
into the house. There were high-backed chairs along the wall
and big Eastern vases upon tables, and, on either side,
a large cabinet with a glass front and little curiosities within,
dimly gleaming. The doors were open--into the darkened parlor,
the library, the dining-room. All these rooms seemed empty.
Eugenia passed along, and stopped a moment on the threshold of each.
"Comme c'est bien!" she murmured again; she had thought of just
such a house as this when she decided to come to America.
She opened the front door for herself--her light tread had summoned
none of the servants--and on the threshold she gave a last look.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: Daniel d'Arthez. "The aristocracy has acknowledged her by retreating
to the recesses of its landed estates, where it has hidden itself to
die--emigrating inland before the march of ideas, as of old to foreign
lands before that of the masses. The women who could have founded
European /salons/, could have guided opinion and turned it inside out
like a glove, could have ruled the world by ruling the men of art or
of intellect who ought to have ruled it, have committed the blunder of
abandoning their ground; they were ashamed of having to fight against
the citizen class drunk with power, and rushing out on to the stage of
the world, there to be cut to pieces perhaps by the barbarians who are
at its heels. Hence, where the middle class insist on seeing
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